


crush culture

by hinazu



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Boys Being Boys, Childhood Friends, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Crushes, Cute Yamaguchi Tadashi, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Snow, Tsukishima Kei is Bad at Feelings, conan gray's crush culture, help me they're both stupid, no beta we die like men, they're both rly bad with feelings honestly, yama thinks it's unrequited but who really knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23750251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinazu/pseuds/hinazu
Summary: confession
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 52





	crush culture

**Author's Note:**

> crush culture by conan gray

Yamaguchi starts again, fails again. It feels like there are no more words left in the world, absolutely nothing he can say right now to fill the gap, and he feels his vision start to tunnel.

“Yamaguchi.” He looks up, the voice cool and crisp and sounding like he’s starting to get frustrated with him. “Spit it out.”

“Okay,” he exhales on a shaky breath, fingers sticky and picking at the letter in his hands. In it are a few choice words to explain the whole matter, as it was the best he could do. He tried and tried to write the perfect confession, tried night after night, only to leave himself out pulling his own hair out and near tears almost every single time. Everything sounded stupid and too severe and not severe enough, not big enough for what he felt. Nothing sounded right, so after countless trials that chipped away pieces of his sanity he finally called it quits. The letter in his hands is everything, and he can’t bring himself to part with it.

With his focus came Tsukki’s. “What is that? Give it,” he says, snatching it out of Yamaguchi’s tight grip before he has the chance to process. And just like that, Yamaguchi’s heart is on the table. He stares in horror as Tsukki’s fingers pick their way into the carefully sealed envelope. Even through his panic Yamaguchi appreciates the methodical way Tsukki has of doing things, the way he seems to waste no movement in fret or hesitation. He has no reason to hesitate: the calculations running constantly in his head have no margin of error.

Yamaguchi blinks and the letter is open, Tsukki’s eyes already taking in the message on the page. There isn’t much at all and quite a large margin of error in the interpretation, so Yamaguchi explains himself before he is even prompted. “Actually I was going to give that to you anyway and you weren’t really supposed to open it here because it was kind of more of an ‘at home’ kind of thing and I know this seems, um, crazy and completely out of the blue and everything, and I just ― I kind of, um . . . I just wanted to . . . Tsukki?”

At this point Tsukishima has gone way too long without taking his eyes off the sheet of paper. Yamaguchi knows how much is written, knows how fast of a reader Tsukki is, knows that even a not-so-fast reader like Hinata wouldn’t take nearly this much time, knows that even someone who was  _ illiterate _ might do this faster ― 

Tsukishima clears his throat. “Well, I can say that wasn’t what I expected.”

One beat passes, then another. Yamaguchi can’t even say if either of them is breathing. He shifts to his other foot, shifts back. After a few years he realizes Tsukki doesn’t have anything else to say, so he picks up the slack.

“Um . . . well, what were you expecting?”

“Not that.”

Not helpful at all. In fact, Yamaguchi is pretty sure he can feel the bile rising in the back of his throat, feel the walls caving in.  _ Not good. This is not good. _

“Is it . . . bad?” He wants to stop talking. He wants so badly to stop talking but the words just keep coming and his brain keeps stewing up stupid questions with only the possibility of stupid responses, and plus if he stops talking now he might really pass out. Or puke.

“Look, I really sort of didn’t even want to tell you. Like, yes I wanted to, or part of me wanted to, but then the other part of me knew everything that could go wrong, and everything that would change, and so I  _ really _ didn’t want to but I just . . . had to. It was killing me. It was eating me inside like a really gross nasty monster or one of those dinosaurs that you really like that you always tell me about but I can never remember the name of. I tried so hard but I just couldn’t take it anymore and so I told you. So . . . yeah.” He feels like crying. He feels like going home and curling up in bed and forgetting about this stupid night and telling himself it was all a dream. He feels like walking away and leaving Tsukki alone under this streetlight under the setting sun, stupid Tsukki who won’t even reply to him and stupid Tsukki who can’t ever seem to close his stupid mouth, whose lips are currently pressed together very tightly in a neat little line. Everything about him is neat, from his school blazer to his gym bag to his figurine collections at home, so it seems only fitting that he would be neat around emotions, too. Neat and tidy. No strings attached, nothing personal.

Except this was personal. This was very personal, and Yamaguchi has always had very many strings attached. They have always been opposites in almost more ways to count, with everything bursting out of Yamaguchi in chaos: his wrinkled school blazer and missing buttons, his gym bag with both empty and overflowing pockets, his room with too many papers and souvenirs scattered around the room. And right now, staring at the blank sheet of Tsukki’s face, he felt almost bad. Guilty for being so chaotic, for disrupting everything that Tsukishima works so tirelessly to perfect, from his social cues to his music taste to his faces in conversation. Because his blank face isn’t so blank suddenly: his eye twitching once, his eyelids fluttering, his breathing catching. His hand flexing and unflexing around the letter, crinkling little dents right next to the ones Yamaguchi made himself. And he stands in front of him, watching Tsukishima unravel slowly, watching all of the hard work crumble.

And he feels guilty.

“Look, I ― I have to go, my mom wanted me home an hour ago. Sorry, Tsukki,” he says, turning around and jogging off before he can convince himself not to. He leaves Tsukishima standing alone under a street lamp with the letter in his hand, snowflakes starting to swirl around his head and catch in the light. Yamaguchi’s handwriting from the back of the envelope stares back at him from his mind his entire way home, convincing him again and again of the dirty dirty rotten joke of a friend he had become.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i might come back and add more to this since i'm not 100% sure it's over so stay tuned if you enjoyed :)


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